Lakefront might have better uses than upgraded Husky Stadium

Published 10:00 pm, Wednesday, September 26, 2007

After walking around an empty Husky Stadium with an eye toward public safety and building codes instead of football, two impulse conclusions are unavoidable:

What a dump.

Tear it down.

The stadium has been around longer than nearly any of us has been alive, such a familiar lakeshore mastiff that its decay barely registers because it still functions as it has since the Woodrow Wilson administration for several fall Saturdays, plus graduations.

Besides being decrepit, it's also in the way. The Sound Transit light-rail project will begin work next year on the university station. Getting past details to the bottom line, that means a giant hole will gape for five years, give or take, at the stadium's doorstep.

No argument here about the long-term worthiness of the project. But jeez, what a headache.

Then consider that a major feature of one proposal for an expanded 520 bridge across Lake Washington includes an off-ramp that would whoosh right by the stadium's south side upper grandstand before descending to Montlake Boulevard. Just as the viaduct downtown cruises annoyingly close to a score of buildings.

As we know, a hundred years of growth into a metropolis has radically changed much of Seattle. All except for Husky Stadium, whose 18-acre footprint now sits astride waterfront real estate as vital as it is spectacular.

Can't we put a new Husky Stadium elsewhere?

The primary alternative, a permanent move downtown to rent the Seahawks' stadium, makes logical sense. But it butts up against the completely emotional need to keep games on campus so that party-hardy students become so infatuated with the scene that they will grow into party-hardy boosters, the kind who are today being asked to pay for the entirety of whatever happens to the old barn.

The fact is that on most game days, the stadium's Don James Center hosts the largest gathering of Northwest power brokers, fat cats, billionaires, entourages and wannabes of any civic forum. Has for decades.

Everybody who is anybody that gets things done around here shows up at least once a year. They all get hit up to donate, too. The university's recent capital campaign that pulled more than $2 billion in private money out of the community didn't get it solely from an e-mail request. The "ask" goes down more easily while the moguls are bumping bellies, cocktails in hand, murmuring over Jake and the lake.

If you ever wondered about the value of the football program, now you know. The university will never give that up.

So for purposes of stimulating the civic creative juices, I suggested to athletic director Todd Turner another alternative: Build a new stadium down the street and sell or lease the current site to a higher and better use, taking the proceeds to help pay for the new yard.

His nose wrinkled up like the corrugation in cardboard.

"Not gonna happen," he said. "It would be far more expensive than anything we will propose for the site."

Knowing that Turner and the university's high-powered renovation committee are heavily committed to a remodel, it seemed reasonable to kick around the idea with someone more knowledgeable than me and less invested than Turner.

Steve Kramer has been a professor of civil engineering for 23 years at the UW, and has in his possession all sorts of maps, soil samples and geologic data on the area in question: the huge greenery along Montlake north of the intramural building and stadium parking lots that hosts a golf driving range, a few small buildings, a swamp and little else.

His conclusion: Ummmm ...

"Not to say it couldn't be done," he said, "but it would be expensive and raise a lot of environmental concerns."

The biggest problem is that much of the area for a long time was the primary dump for the Laurelhurst and Montlake neighborhoods. That's right; a huge garbage pile along a pristine lakeshore, bringing a little New Jersey to the heart of Seattle. That eyesore was long ago buried, although methane gas still must be burned off.

The secondary problem is that what is not an old dump is an old peat bog. The annual die-off of grasses adds another layer of decomposing vegetation that over millennia has made a lousy subsurface for construction.

The bog extends under Montlake Boulevard -- there's a dip in the roadbed that is the bog's calling card -- to the University Village shopping center.

"Below that bog at 50, 60, 70 feet is solid glacial till that could support stadium piles -- it's done all the time," Kramer said. "But it's a more costly foundation system, and the stadium would still sit on soft, sloppy material that raises questions about earthquake damage. Liquefaction isn't as much a problem as how the ground would move. If the structure would be shaken harder, it's more costly to build."

Because the low area is also where Ravenna Creek enters the lake, Kramer said, finding well-compacted land requires going up into the hills surrounding the shore, inevitably running into view homes owned by lawyers as well as people who hire lawyers. The biggest obstacles may well have nothing to do with geology.

OK, so maybe there are a few problems. But Kramer didn't indicate there were any geologic or engineering issues that weren't surmountable with enough money.

Just for fun, let's take a stroll to the upside.

Imagine on the current stadium site a world-class health care/research facility that would be a perfect complement to the adjacent University Hospital, already one of the nation's best, connected by overhead and underground pedestrian walkways and retail.

As Seattle expands its role in world health and biotech innovation, the complex would be a powerful magnet for private firms, served by a transportation hub that would bring workers from around the city to a beautiful site without need for cars. Whatever garage is necessary would take many cars off the neighborhood's congested streets.

Since the new stadium would need better access, Montlake Boulevard could be expanded with multiple lanes, including one dedicated only to residents and hospital users, eliminating the biggest neighborhood headache on six fall Saturdays.

The best practical virtue: Income from the made-over stadium site would make a significant dent in the cost of the new one.

Negatives are many, of course. And we know how Seattle is about process, especially when large-scale development threatens a fern or a guppy.

But before the renovation committee submits its proposal to the Board of Regents in November, would it not be amusing to indulge briefly a wild idea with a yes and work backward to no, before starting at no and missing a great opportunity?

Or have I missed a point about the purpose and mission of a great university?